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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
July 2021 47
I
spent a depressing part of the 1990s objecting
to bad developments in Dublin and then around
the country. One person who’d often turn up to
take regressive and contrary stances, often as
a paid advocate for property developers, was Dr
Conor Skehan, landscape consultant.
25 years later though I realise that it wasn’t so
much that the stances were regressive and contrary.
They were wrong. Conor Skehan is the wrongest man
in Ireland.
Bein’
Skehan
by Michael Smith
He is former director of Bord na Móna, former
Chairman of the Peatlands Council and former
Chairman of the Housing Agency but it’s his
wrongness that distinguishes him.
One of Skehn’s vehicles is television
POLITICS
How is Conor so wrong?
was formely the head, teaching about the causes
and eects of development in rural and urban areas.
His areas of expertise include Foresighting, Impact
Assessment, Urbanism, Housing and Rural
Planning.
Long-term advisor to Fine Gael on the environ-
ment, chartered architect, impact assessor,
landscape architect and planner, Fellow of TUD’s
Futures Academy which for most of us doesn’t even
have a past. He has been a consultant to the UN’s
Post-Conflict and Disaster management Unit and has
advised on Disaster Risk Reduction and Impact
Assessment in a number of missions for Iraq, Sri
Lanka and Afghanistan. He is former director of Bord
na Móna, former Chairman of the Peatlands Council
and former Chairman of the Housing Agency.
For a long time Skehan has specialised in supply
-
ing consultancy services on the, presumed elusive,
environmental impact assessment regime.
An architect by training, he has “practiced, lec-
tured and published on EIA within the planning
system since 1989 advising the public and private
sectors on the practicalities of assessment, deci-
sion-making and their integration with strategic and
land-use planning”, according to the TUD Futures
Background
So who is this man and just how is he so wrong about
so much and still around?
Skehan’s long-term position is Lecturer in Techno-
logical University of Dublin (TUD, formerly DIT)’s
Centre for Planning and Environment, of which he
48 July 2021
Academy website.
In particular over the years CAAS and Envi
-
ronmental Impact Services Limited, the
consultancy companies he controls have
reaped millions of euros over 25 years from
local authorities, particularly for advice about
environmental impact assessment, perceived
as a nightmareishly complex, demanding and
elusive process. In particular Skehna has pro-
vided services in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown
and Dublin city when Owen Keegan was Chief
Executive. The problem is that sometimes
their advice has been deficient. Skehan has
often advised that mere screening suces
instead of EIS. An assesment by their consul-
tancy that no EIA is required substitute for a
proper assessment which would be proper
even if the assessment concluded that
impacts were insignificant. This also avoids
recognition that the impact of a number of
related schemes may need to be assessed
“cumulatively”. The problem is that this is
catching up with him. He appears to have
advised that post-Covid infrastructure includ-
ing cycleways on the quays and in
Sandymount; and pedestrianisation such as
in Malahide, escaped EIA. A case being taken
by Councillor Mannix Flynn and local residents
in the High Court may expose serious delin-
quency here. In particular, the cumulative
impact of all the infrastructure may have
needed to be considered in one assessment.
Ironically, in view of his professional stance
down the decades his partner, Nicola Byrne,
is one of the leading lights in the Save Mala
-
hide Village campaign seeking to take a legal
action against EIA failures in the case of
pedestrianisation of the main street in Mala-
hide near where they live.
He also advised that the impact of the
National Children’s Hospital when it was pro-
posed at a height of 16 storeys on Eccles
Street in 2011, dominant over vistas of the
city’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street,
though distinctive and conspicuous, was not
largely negative. In the end this was utterly
rejected by An Bord Pleanalá and the scheme
went down in mortifing flames.
But it’s his wrongness that distinguishes
Conor Skehan.
The thread that makes him wrong is not
having principles, values or a vision. The mis-
take is incoherently but passionately touting
an incoherent economic line that can be used
by vested interests. The vehicle is Fine Gael;
the TU/DIT; the guest lecture, where he deliv
-
ers racily with the benefit of slick, if sometimes
misleading, graphics and folksy anecdotes;
and above all, and most excruciatingly, televi-
sion. And sometimes, inevitably, the Sunday
Independent.
Tourism and Economics
In 1996 he co-wrote a report for An Bord Fáilte
with An Taisce which suggested that “sustain-
able tourism in scenic landscape areas
depends, firstly, on ensuring the economic
stability of the local community and, sec
-
ondly, on preventing tourism, “or related
landscape protection (such as national parks),
from excluding other forms of development”.
It was a time-serving recipe for a free for all on
the environment and embarrassing for An
Taisce to be associated with it.
He clarified this Big Idea a couple of years
later, telling the Irish Times: “The restructur
-
ing of agriculture will divide the Republic into
productive areas in the east and south, and
non-productive areas in the north and west.
This is also creating a massive vacuum which
is being filled by urban values about the need
to preserve the scenery. So we’re at a very cru-
cial stage, a crux period in history”. This has
been characterised as the Skehan ‘postcard
and Ruhr’ binary.
His views have always been graphic, height-
ening the shock at how wayward they are.
At that time what worried Skehan was that
vulnerable, peripheral communities were
“putting all their eggs in the basket of tourism
and having their values undermined by this
dependence. Ultimately, they have to do eve-
rything it wants because tourism is a very
jealous mistress, and that includes sterilising
all other activities for the sake of preserving
a view”.
Rural Ireland and Economics
He drilled down on the challenges to rural Ire-
land. In 2004, by then working for the Dublin
Institute of Technology, he told the Burren Law
School: “By 2015 productive agriculture in Ire-
land will be confined to a narrow band
stretching from north Munster to southwest
Leinster. Across large swathes of the Irish
countryside this generation will witness
something that hasn’t happened for 6,000
years. For the first time since the late stone
age the tree canopy will close out the sun and
the sky from the ancient fields and meadows.
It has begun already”. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
In 2018 he and Lorcan Sirr, writing in the
Irish Times, made it explicit that “There is a
need for planning for the future that is more
likely to happen - the continued urbanisation
of the eastern region - instead of trying to pre-
vent it”.
In other words he was arguing against bal
-
anced regional development. He was against
established national policy and what the likes
of An Taisce favoured – the development of
counterpoints to Dublin in cities like Water-
ford, Limerick, Cork and Galway. For planners
this is a stance rooted in over-emphasis of
economics over environmental, and particu-
larly social, imperatives. Sure economics
drives eciencies from scale but you want to
ensure continued use of existing
infrastructure (for reasons of environment and
sustainability) and people prefer to stay near
where they grew up (for social reasons).
In a more nuanced 2009 piece for Village,
Skehan and Sirr (who presumably contributed
the more thoughtful parts) felt that NAMA
would expose the nightmare of “the two fun-
damental property vulnerabilities of planning
in Ireland: the inadequacy of the land-use
planning system, and the poor track record of
property development by public agencies”. It
has always been interesting to follow what
Skehan considers adequacy in land-use
planning.
They noted that “the most serious underly
-
ing planning problem in Ireland is that that it
assumes that planning laws and practices
from the UK, the Netherlands or Scandinavia
can be imported and successfully applied
here. But patterns of land ownership, property
law, a constitution, demography and the
absence of a long-established urban culture
all make Ireland a profoundly dierent place
in which to plan”. That seems a pity.
Urbanisation and Economics
They also objected to Forced Urbanisation:
“Professional planners in Ireland, at all
levels from national plans to village plans are
engaged in a large-scale programme of forced
urbanisation on the basis that only concentra
-
tions of population and urbanisation can
provide a better use of infrastructure, quality
July 2021 49
of life and environmental protection as they
have in many other countries.
Despite paying lip service, they said, to the
need for rural regeneration, “no Irish develop-
ment plans have specific proactive policies for
housing in the countryside: instead, all have
prohibitions and restrictions. The planner is
therefore constantly in an adversarial role,
fighting the local councillor, the public and the
rural community, and consequently sending
planning into disrepute”.
Far from it, surely this is sending planning
into repute?
They went on: “The National Spatial Strat
-
egy aims to achieve ‘balanced regional
development’, an outdated planning concept
that is used as window dressing for ‘Any-
where-but-Dublin’ policies which are in
complete denial of the overwhelming evi
-
dence that both the existing and future bulk
of Ireland’s population and associated eco-
nomic activity are based along the eastern
part of the country.
A thriving eastern seaboard is not wishful
thinking, it is an economic necessity
Finally, there is a profound misunderstand
-
ing in the public sector about the risks and
returns of property development. Property
development for profit is not for the faint of
heart. It requires flexibility, speed, decisive-
ness, eciency, expertise and sustained
applications of determination and energy, and
it is the nature of public agencies – not
necessarily the individuals – to be slow, unre-
sponsive, autocratic, uncompetitive,
expensive and inecient”.
Cars and Climate
In a 2009 lecture, Skehan suggested the
Dublin Port Tunnel should be extended under
the city centre:
“And suddenly our city centre traders can
have huge multi-storey carparks under Clerys,
under Arnotts, under Brown Thomas”.
We could take it further and fantasise about
having a city that isn’t just a place that you’re
trying to keep cars out of, it’s a place that
you’re actively trying to bring cars into and
use them and accept the reality that the car is
with us and will always be with us.
In 2011, as Fine Gael entered government
with Phil Hogan as Minister for the Environ-
ment, Conor Skehan was its top environmental
policy advisor. The Irish Times reported that
“Skehan has been writing policy papers and
scripts for FG for the last two decades…What
makes the architect and top FG environmental
advisor Dr Skehan so noteworthy is that he is
also a climate change sceptic (or denier,
depending on the term you prefer)”. Despite
his position advising Hogan, Skehan told the
Irish Times he would “absolutely not” be
advising the incoming Minister on what the
government should do to address climate
change.
For the first time since the late stone
age the tree canopy will close out the
sun and the sky from the ancient fields
and meadows. It has begun already.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Climate Change Denial
Skehan told Environment Editor, Frank McDon-
ald, that his scepticism about the scientific
evidence for climate change was a “personal
position” as a result of spending what he
described as “a long time on the stump”. He
was a professed acolyte of ‘Sceptical Environ-
mentalist’ and charlatan, Bjorn Lomborg
Delivering a lecture at the Institute for Inter-
national and European Aairs in July 2009,
Skehan said “new information” had shown
that “we do not live in a particularly warm
world” because graphs showing temperature
anomalies were “flat”.
“We are now . . . in the 12th successive year
of non-warming – 12 years straight, a very
uncomfortable fact”, he claimed,
inaccurately.
He also disputed any link between tempera-
ture and carbon-dioxide (CO2) levels.
Referring to polar bears in the Arctic,
Skehan said the only area where they were
actually decreasing was “because the tribe of
people who live in that area made their living
by selling their licences to shoot polar bears
to American tourists”.
Head of Housing Agency
Skehan, perhaps because his non-planning
and non-environment view of planning and the
environment appealed to the unplanning and
unenvironment party, Fine Gael, was hitting
50 July 2021
the big time. He was appointed unpaid Chair of the
Housing Agency in 2013 – and reappointed in 2018.
In 2016 Skehan had notified the Minister that he
would not be available for re-appointment because
of his belief that “the continued expansion of the
Agency would demand a Chair with deeper skills in
Financial and HR Management than I possess” but
they could find no replacement
Conflicts of Interests
While chairing the Housing Agency he remained
busy.
Skehan’s environmental consultancy firm CAAS
was awarded more than €1 million in public con-
tracts during his last two years as chairperson of
the Housing Agency.
The contracts included one from the Department
of Housing, to which Skehan was reporting in his
position as agency chairperson. Skehan’s private
firm also produced work on housing development
for Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council, pub-
lished at a time when Skehan’s public role at the
Housing Agency involved advising local authorities
on housing policy.
During the last two years of Skehan’s time as
chair of the Housing Agency, CAAS was also
awarded public contracts by the Department of
Public Expenditure and Reform, the National Trans-
port Authority, Fáilte Ireland, Dublin City Council,
as well as Fingal, Monaghan, Kilkenny and Tipper-
ary County Councils.
Main Fine Gael Advisor
In 2011 Fine Gael ministers Phil Hogan and Jimmy
Deenihan appointed Skehan to chair the Peatlands
Council, a body established to protect and con-
serve Irish peatlands.Taoiseach Enda Kenny
instructed Skehan to convene a three-day confer-
ence in Athlone’s Hodson Bay Hotel the following
year. CAAS was paid almost €40,000 for its
involvement with the conference.
Over New Year 2018 he stated people were
“gaming the system” by presenting themselves
homeless to jump up the housing waiting list. He
said it was time to stop pretending we could end
homelessness. Dublin City Council passed a
motion calling for his removal from the Housing
Agency. A month later he defended his views
In June he declared those
who can’t afford to live in
Dublin should simply “move
somewhere cheaper.
before the Dáil Committee on Housing, Planning
and Local Government.
He gamely synopsised his views which included
the following:
-
“That there are too many homelessness
charities”
- “That Homelessness is normal”
- “That people may be gaming the system”
- “That there is a need for vigilance about housing
numbers”
- “That homelessness is a result of aordability”
- “That attention to vacancies and arrears should
be given higher priority; and that housing behav-
iour among millennials is aecting supply”.
He mentioned people claiming that they had
been kicked out by their parents, or posting on
social media about wanting a “forever home” and
claimed he dealt in “facts” and not “views”, and
had been informed through social media and con
-
tacts with a councillor that people were attempting
to declare as homeless.
He also referenced a report from Fingal County
Council which noted that 68 offers of accommoda-
tion had been turned down the previous year, of
which 36 related to families in homeless
circumstances.
At New Year 2019 (New Year is a good time to get
noticed) he told Newstalk Breakfast, “as a coun-
try”, Ireland needed to change what is acceptable
as “affordable” housing.
He said in other countries “starter” homes came
without built in kitchens or tiled bathrooms. It was
unrealistic to expect a fully completed house at a
realistic price”.
Skehan is capable of adaptive wrongness. For
example he can get things very wrong in an almost
improvised way at short notice in the Sunday Inde-
pendent. He will then stop at nothing to defend
the wrongness. Earlier this year he wrote a piece
titled “We must learn from terrible calamity engulf-
ing Lone Star state. Renewable energy is not
always available when needed and the Govern
-
ment is in denial about our future need for gas. He
mistakenly attributed power cuts in Texas to over-
reliance on renewables. In fact according to the
Economist magazine such allegations are “not
fair…natural gas, which accounts for around half
of the state’s electricity generation, was the pri
-
mary reason for the shortfall”. It said the regulator
deserved some blame “but the bigger failure lies
in the state’s light-touch regulation and favouring
of business interests”.
Move!
In June he declared those who can’t aord to live in
Dublin should simply “move somewhere cheaper”.
Asked on RTÉ’s Prime Time about the lack of avail-
able housing. he said it ultimately came down to
choice.
“If you live in the city you’ve already made a
choice, you’ve chosen to live in the most expensive
part of Ireland by choosing to live in Dublin city”, he
adumbrated as if those who diered were fools.
